


Creature Comforts

by Frenchmeister



Category: The Shape of Water (2017)
Genre: (nothing too weird I promise), Alien Biology, Canon Compliant, Cunnilingus, F/M, First Time, Fluff, Fluff and Smut, Oral Sex, POV Third Person Limited, Penis In Vagina Sex, Smut, Vaginal Fingering, Vaginal Sex, Weird Biology, author overthought the asset's physiology and evolutionary biology
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-02
Updated: 2018-03-02
Packaged: 2019-03-25 23:40:32
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,643
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13845474
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Frenchmeister/pseuds/Frenchmeister
Summary: He stood up to meet her, trilling cheerfully as she allowed him to trail his fingertips over her clavicle, tiny goosebumps forming on her skin in their wake instead of bioluminescence. He’d tasted desire on her before, which is why her sudden departure had confused him and put him in such a sullen mood. It seemed she intended to let him fully explore her this time.





	Creature Comforts

**Author's Note:**

> I set out to write a more explicitly detailed account of their first time because I wanted porn from the Asset's POV, but I ended up including a lot of backstory on him based on all my headcanons. Most of those are listed at the end and aren't too spoilery, but I think the only one you need to know going in is that he can taste through the skin on his palms.
> 
> Also, since the first chapter of the book was posted online, I'm aware that my account of how the Asset was captured is incorrect. But I began writing this before that information came out, so I'm sticking with it. I imagine the villagers here were somehow tricked into revealing him (they thought Strickland's team just wanted to observe him? idk) and didn't purposely allow him to be captured and hurt.

She’d signed something to him earlier that day, before his touch had sent her running. The intent of Elisa’s signing that morning was clear; he understood that she was asking him a question, one that she seemed a little sheepish about, as if she should have asked it sooner. But the short chopping motions of her fingers were unfamiliar to him. The fingerspelling he got in response to his confused chirrup was similarly meaningless.

 

_ N - A - M- E _

 

She huffed a bit when he still didn’t answer, but her eyes looked amused. She tapped her palm against her chest, repeated the chopping motion, then spelled out  _ E - L - I - S - A _ . Pointed outside the small cave, chopped, spelled  _ G - I - L - E - S _ .

 

Ah. She’d never asked, and he hadn’t offered up anything when she first introduced herself. He’d never needed to call  _ himself  _ something. He simply  _ was.  _ Names were for the landwalkers.

 

He signed back to her.  _ Many names.  _ He’d been called plenty of things throughout his life, many of which were impossible to translate with his limited vocabulary in Elisa’s language. He attempted a few nonetheless.  _ River God. Water Father _ . Very  _ Old Fish _ . 

 

The names he went by in the jungle encompassed far more meaning than those simple signs, but Elisa seemed to understand well enough. It was up to the landwalkers to assign him one. 

 

_ What is my name? _ he asked her.

 

The man who went by Strickland had already given him several, and even though he didn’t know what they meant yet, he could tell they were all vile and unpleasant, far from the reverent terms his people usually chose. Elisa would pick something better than  _ that _ , surely.

 

She seemed a little melancholy, but smiled as she hooked her first fingers together, then flipped her hands over and repeated the gesture.  _ Friend.  _

  
  


* * *

  
  


He sighed as his head slipped under the surface, legs awkwardly bent to the side so he could fit his entire body in Elisa’s strange, tiny pond. It was immensely uncomfortable. With no room to stretch out, let alone swim, his muscles were cramping and weakening, his scales dulling a little more every day. The salt did little to counteract the metallic taste of the water that burned his gills with each breath.

 

And yet... this place felt like home. This series of indoor caves where tiny jaguar-like creatures (who were  _ also  _ friends, and ones he was  _ allowed  _ to touch, who purred and rubbed their scent on him when he returned their affection rather than running off) roamed freely, where Giles showed him pictures and artwork and taught him signs every day, where nearly  _ everything  _ smelled and tasted like Elisa, this was a  _ good  _ place.

 

The jungle...was not. The hair-faced landwalkers, the ones with skin as pale and pink as a river dolphin’s, had arrived just days after he’d hatched, killing his mother in the process. He’d spent many years looking for more of his kind after that, hiding from most of the landwalkers and constantly moving. He’d even reached the end of the river once. It flowed into the biggest lake he’d ever seen, one that was salten like the water Elisa and Strickland’s group kept him in, and it was  _ beautiful _ . 

 

Breathing in that cool, clean water was like finally managing to pick out a sliver of fish bone wedged under his gum — instant relief. There were growths of living rock out there, teeming with life in more colors than he could count. The fish there tasted even sweeter than the eggs Elisa brought him as he starved in Strickland’s cave, and the large, rough-skinned ones with rows and rows of sharp teeth often put up enough of a fight to actually be fun. It was better than the jungle in nearly every way!

 

But it was big.  _ Too  _ big. Too  _ everything. _ Too deep, too wide, too clear, too  _ empty _ . Seeing nothing but water in every direction only served to remind him that he was without brethren. Coming face to face with the air breathing behemoths in that giant lake and hearing their mournful cries as they searched for mates made him feel more lonesome than ever, and so he’d returned to his brackish river. 

 

The landwalkers changed every so often, as did their language, the names they bestowed upon him. They would move on, or turn against him and call him a demon, or he would tire of them and find a new group to consort with, but the routine always remained the same. Mutual trust would be established, they would offer him fish or poultry or cattle (or even fellow landwalkers killed in battle, on one occasion), and in return he would cure their ills. They often seemed uncaring of the exhaustion their demands brought about, but it was a good enough arrangement.

 

Until Strickland showed up, that is. He was wary of new landwalkers on principle, and this one in particular had the same cold, cruel anger in his eyes as the one who had killed his only kin, but he had followed the proper procedure and laid out a feast of cooked fish at the edge of his pond. That suggested the native landwalkers trusted him enough to teach Strickland their secrets, so he’d foolishly peeked his eyes above the water...

 

...And that was when Strickland had produced that horrendous black stick, the one that sent an even stronger shock through his body than the eels in the river. Then came the nets, made of something stronger and far finer than anything the natives used to fish, the strands of it nearly invisible in the water where they caught on his gills and spines and tore his claws as he struggled. Then there was the closed container of water that got staler every day until he was gasping for oxygen, then the large, dark cave where iron ropes were wrapped around his limbs and neck, rubbing his scales off and leaving his skin raw.

 

And then...he was here in Elisa’s home, in her white, smooth-walled pond that was no bigger than that tube Strickland had put him in, where his scales were now sloughing away of their own accord.

 

And where Elisa was walking purposefully back in, sliding her silky outer layer off her shoulders to reveal bare skin.

 

Yes, this was home, he decided. It was uncomfortable at times, but Elisa was here, the only one who had ever truly listened to him instead of making demands with useless offers of food he could have easily caught himself.  _ Elisa  _ was home to him.

 

He stood up to meet her, trilling cheerfully as she allowed him to trail his fingertips over her clavicle, tiny goosebumps forming on her skin in their wake instead of bioluminescence. He’d tasted desire on her before, which is why her sudden departure had confused him and put him in such a sullen mood. It seemed she intended to let him fully explore her this time.

 

Their touches remained playful at first, Elisa brushing her fingers down his arms and over the rays there, delighted at the sparks of blue dancing after them. He repeated her actions likewise, just as before, but got distracted as the goosebumps spread across her chest, causing her nipples to pebble up.

 

Landwalkers had the most peculiar bodies. He understood they needed to provide milk to their young, but they were the only creatures whose breasts remained swollen throughout their adult lives, regardless of their cycle or the ages of their offspring, if any. What possible purpose could they serve the rest of the time?

 

Retracting his claws as much as possible, he cupped Elisa’s breasts and curiously rubbed the pads of his thumbs over her nipples, his gills stiffening in surprise as she sucked in a shaky breath and grabbed at his shoulders.  _ Oh _ . 

 

Once he was sure he hadn’t overstepped her boundaries again by inadvertently stumbling upon an erogenous zone, he tried again, experimenting with varied amounts of pressure and carefully observing her reactions. As odd as they were, they seemed to bring her great pleasure, and he grinned as he felt her face grow warmer.

 

She responded in kind, searching for a similarly sensitive area on his own chest and abdomen. He had no breasts or nipples, only tough, thick plates, but she dug her fingertips into every nook and cranny between them, tickling the skin there and signing  _ good?  _ every so often. Soft, delicate fingertips grasped the webbing at his underarm, sliding along the length of it until a deep purr began to rumble in his chest and his knees trembled.

 

She stepped close enough to press their entire bodies together, and he immediately wrapped his arms about her, overwhelmed by her sheer existence. Nobody else had ever truly cared about his desires. Nobody had ever made sure he was content with their actions, at most simply assuming he was pleased unless he said otherwise. _ Nobody had ever asked his name _ .

 

He wasn’t lying when he said he had many, but perhaps his first one was his  _ true  _ name. He barely remembered his mother before her death, too young to form concrete memories despite hatching with fully formed fins, claws, teeth, and hunting instinct. But he did have one clear memory — a lilting cry, directed solely at him.

 

Maybe it wasn’t a name. Maybe it was a generic term of endearment, or just a random phrase. Maybe she wasn’t even his mother (unlikely, given her proximity to his egg and the lack of any others like him, but possible). Either way, it was the closest thing he had to a name for himself, and he wanted to share this with Elisa, this secret bit of knowledge just for the two of them.

 

Pulling away, he repeated her signs from earlier: a palm at his chest, then a quick chop-chop of his first two fingers on either hand against each other. Then he sank down and bent backwards, ducking under the water. His sounds just didn’t carry right through the air. He let out a melodic, keening cry, mimicking his mother’s vocalization to the best of his abilities.

 

When he surfaced, her eyes were wet, tears welling up in them. They spilled over as she whistled his name back at him.

 

It didn’t sound much like what he had said, not really, but somehow that made it even better. He had a name now that only she knew and could use, and it was beautiful.

 

He swiped at the tear rolling down her left cheek with his thumb, delighting in its brininess. It reminded him of the open water, with all the freedom and lack of worry that came with it, but...better. It tasted of the one thing missing from that adventure: Elisa herself.

 

Wanting to get a better taste, he leaned in and pressed his mouth to the other side of her face, gently lapping up her tears. That seemed to amuse Elisa, for some reason.

 

She brought up her delicate fingers to play with the fins at the side of his head for a few seconds, then pushed to one side, forcing him to face her. Those grinning lips pressed against his own a moment later.

 

He’d seen landwalkers kiss countless times before, as a greeting, as an expression of affection — but who could have expected it to be so  _ pleasant? _ He clumsily copied her motions, tangling his hands in her hair and making a high pitched sound of need as her tongue worked its way into his mouth and felt its way around his teeth. It was drier than his, but the texture was heavenly! Soft and velvety, deftly twisting around his own tongue in between gasps of pleasure as his hands returned to her breasts.

 

He was shocked when he chanced exploring her mouth in return. It was hot and damp — and her teeth! They were blunt, every last one of them! All this time he’d been assuming their meat-eating teeth were hidden behind those wide, flat ones in the front, but instead of sharp points they all had dull little ridges. How fascinating!

 

Perhaps sensing his interest in them, she pulled away and put those blunt tools of hers to use, nibbling at his neck and licking at his gills. A shiver ran up and down his back, rattling the spines there.

 

It felt wrong to bare his throat to another creature’s teeth, and it felt even  _ more  _ wrong to bite someone he loved, but he returned the favor anyway, pressing his fangs into the tender skin at the junction of neck and shoulder as gently as he could manage. Even when Elisa urged him on with demands of  _ more  _ and  _ harder _ , he didn’t dare put as much force into his biting as she was. Didn’t she realize how dangerous he was? His claws, his teeth, his thick hide and plating — all of it allowed him to hunt and kill with ease. Loving was a new concept to him, one he wasn’t entirely certain he was capable of carrying out.

 

Elisa wasn’t deterred by his hesitation, however, and continued to explore his body with mouth and hands. She trailed her fingers up and down his back, caressing the base of his spines, and he closed his eyes, basking in the feeling and trying to absorb some of Elisa’s unflappable spirit as trepidation washed over him. 

 

His slit was opening up. He could feel the pressure building down there, feel moisture pooling just inside the edge. Nothing about him had discouraged her so far, and surely she’d seen enough of him to expect a certain level of...exoticness, but he was still nervous of her reaction. It was the only part of him she hadn’t seen yet, after all. The landwalkers in the jungle rarely covered up their bodies like Strickland and his men, and he’d seen enough to know he looked  _ nothing  _ like them down there. Maybe Elisa was just tolerating their differences up till now and that would be the last straw.

 

But when her knuckles brushed against his lower belly a minute later, she didn’t turn away in disgust. No, she glanced down, saw the new furrow between his plates with the very tip of his member poking out at the top, and immediately dropped to her knees to get a better look, her enthusiasm inducing another wave of arousal. A bead of pearly liquid spilled over the edge at the bottom of the slit and rolled down. Elisa stopped it with a delicate swipe of an index finger and continued upward to where the edges of his slit were beginning to curl outward, the translucent fins fanning out and twitching as she stroked them lightly.

 

He was having a hard time holding back. He knew it was inevitable, that it was what she clearly desired, but still he hesitated to reveal himself. Another touch like  _ that _ , though, and he’d be fully exposed — 

 

With practiced ease, Elisa sucked her first two fingers into her mouth, then brought them, dripping with saliva, back to his slit and immediately dipped one  _ inside _ , rubbing against the folds of his sheath tucked in there.

 

He was powerless to help it. He instantly swelled up the rest of the way, his full length sliding out into Elisa’s waiting hand.

 

She didn’t even hesitate. She gave it a quick once-over, then licked up the length and sucked the tip into her mouth with a mischievous smirk.

 

Upon being enveloped in slippery, burning heat, the wobbliness in his knees reached a point where they could no longer hold his weight, and he collapsed into the water with a loud cry. Elisa looked pleased with herself, he noticed.

 

Not wanting to be outdone, he took advantage of his position and encouraged her to lean back against the wall, knees up and legs spread so he could see between her legs.

 

Strangely, it looked almost like his own slit before he was fully aroused, albeit with soft, dark curls of hair surrounding it. Recalling how familiar the action seemed to her, he licked his fingers and slipped them over her folds. His webbing prevented him from inserting their full length, but he pushed first one finger, then two, inside, curling and thrusting them as she gestured for him to do so.

 

After a few minutes, she brought her hand down to massage the nub near the top of her slit in time with his fingers, and before long her thighs began to quiver on either side of him. She was breathing heavily now, brows drawn together, and he had an idea of what was coming next.

 

Assuming it would feel as good for her as it did for him, he adjusted their position a bit and pushed her hand away. Keeping the fingers inside her moving, he brought his mouth to the nub, alternating between licking and sucking it until he found a rhythm that seemed to work for her. One of her hands came down to keep his head in place, then she began to lift and roll her hips, grinding against his tongue and fingers as her other hand tugged at a nipple.

 

Then — a silent cry of bliss, her body curling down around him, and her thighs clamped down on either side of his face, trapping him. She kept him that way as her body writhed and tensed for several seconds, but eventually the muscle spasms slowed and her legs fell open bonelessly.

 

He hadn’t minded being caught like that, though. Feeling those tremors roll over his tongue and fingers, seeing her eyes close and mouth drop open as she shamelessly took her pleasure from him...She’d felt so  _ alive  _ and he was right there, caught up in the middle of it all. He’d bury his face between her legs every day if she’d let him. 

 

He came back up, licking his lips. They still tasted of her, like salt and metal and something mildly sweet but strongly addictive. He wiped his face clean of her slick, tongue sweeping over his fingers for just one more taste.

 

A lazy, satisfied smile on her face, she beckoned for him to come close enough to kiss again. Her hand returned between his legs as their tongues tangled together again, spreading his own slick over the shaft and tracing over every sensitive ridge and frill and curve.

 

When his body began to produce so much slick it was running down her arm and his vocalizing rose sharply in pitch, she released him and leaned back with her legs spread wide. She was still wet there, at the apex of her thighs — wet and flushed and inviting.

 

He moved slowly, giving her time to stop him or guide his actions if he did anything wrong. But she seemed content to bite her lip and just watch him as he slipped inside, his length fitting in easily, even at the girthiest part near his base.

 

Once he was in, instinct took over. He pulled back and thrust in sharply without thinking, repeating the action several times once he confirmed it wasn’t painful for her. How that could be true, he didn’t know — she was startlingly tight around him, so much so that he almost thought it wouldn’t fit when he first pushed inside.

 

Breathing heavily now, her hand returned to the nub above her entrance, and the tight grip around him only increased. Before long, she was climaxing again, a small cry managing to make its way out of her throat as she tossed her head back. Her body tightened in waves, practically  _ pulling  _ his climax from his core.

 

He thrust in three, four more times — and that was it. His entire body lit up and his spines and rays stiffened as he peaked with a low growl, collapsing on top of Elisa. 

 

He stayed there for a few moments to catch his breath, the blue glow under his skin fading away. Elisa’s hands roamed over the parts of him they could reach — his face, his chest, his back. Still feeling too listless to sit up, he caressed her neck in return.

 

He’d been drawn to her scars there since he’d first surfaced to get a good look at her. A mother had once brought her stillborn infant to him, something resembling primitive gill slits deforming its cheeks. There was nothing he could do for her or her child, despite the smorgasbord she’d desperately shoved at him, but that had been the first moment he’d really noticed that the landwalkers weren’t so different from him after all.

 

They’d noted the resemblance sooner. He’d heard the stories some of them told, that the first of his kind had gotten lonely, had pulled out one of his gill arches and put it in the throat of a monkey to spawn the first landwalkers, sacrificing his own ability to speak in the process. He’d just ignored them, written it off as nonsense. Why would his progenitors sacrifice anything for those petty, violent creatures? Why give up speech to create beings like  _ Strickland _ ?

 

But when he looked at Elisa, this woman so  _ perfect  _ it was almost as if she’d been made just for him, when he traced his fingers over the perfectly symmetrical scars on her throat, he could almost believe it. After all, he’d sacrifice  _ everything _ for her. Regardless if their species were truly related at all, regardless if those scars were actually the remnants of gills or just his imagination, they  _ were  _ connected somehow. She was what he’d been waiting for all these years. Both sets of lungs ached all the time, his skin was slowly burning away, his muscle cramps were getting worse every day, but he was more content than he’d ever been in his entire life. He was  _ home _ .

**Author's Note:**

> Overly detailed headcanon time!
> 
>   * Dimitri said to add salt to the Asset's water, but he was found in the Amazon, which is freshwater. I'm pretending here that saltwater is best, but the fish people _can_ live in freshwater, it's just a little uncomfortable. Tap water is treated with nasty stuff like chlorine and contaminated from lead pipes, so adding salt kind of counteracts the negative effects it has on the Asset's system. Or maybe the scientists somehow realized saltwater would be healthier for him. Idk, that little detail just bothered me so I needed to find an explanation.
>   * The Asset's kind used to be more common and were the source of lots of sea monster/mermaid myths, etc. but reproduced at a VERY slow rate and were slowly killed off by humans who mistook them for monsters (maybe the siren myths were true?). They were highly social creatures that lived in groups, which is why the Asset preferred living in nasty water with people he didn't really like to living alone in the ocean.
>   * Turns out the Spanish weren't wrong about there being a "fountain of youth" in Central America, they just didn't realize it was what lived _in_ the springs that made people younger, not the water itself.
>   * Healing people/making them younger takes quite a bit of energy, which humans never seemed to understand. They always thought as long as they had something to offer, he _owed_ them, which is why the Asset didn't care for them much.
>   * Del Toro implied the Asset has more ambiguous genitalia than everyone assumed. In this fic, his genital slit opens up right at the bottom of that vertical groove on his abdomen to expose something that looks very much like a vulva until he's fully erect. But because I'm a glutton for alien dicks, I like to imagine him somehow managing to look like Bad Dragon's Terra dildo when he's completely hard (with Crash as a close second). Y'all are lucky I didn't include him knotting Elisa like I initially planned...
> 

> 
> And lastly...The Asset lacks the muscles necessary for human speech, but can pick up new languages and understand them very quickly. He's a little naive, but highly intelligent. He's not like a gorilla that was taught a handful of signs. He's not human, but he's still a _person_ , okay? He understood what was going on between him and Elisa just fine and consented. It's _not_ bestiality. (Personally, I think that's just straight-up canon and heavily implied in the film, but some people seem to disagree.)


End file.
